Last week I was tied up with the Postharvest Fruit School and missed posting last Thursday. Luckily, there weren’t any major issues here in IT to deal with. And the trend seems to be holding since not much has happened this week either. The most notable issue is that there still seems to be something going on with our phone system. We’ve had reports that outside callers using the 663-8181 number are just hearing it ring and not given the prompt to enter the extension, nor is it going to the front desk to be answered. The problem has been reported to Jerry to look into.
The Elephant in the Room
For those of you unfamiliar with this phrase, it means the subject that people are aware of but don’t want to think or talk about. In this case, I’m referring to identity theft and vulnerability of your information through myWSU. Over the past couple of weeks, it has come to my attention that at least one of our Center family members has been hit hard. It appears that the person’s information was stolen through hacking of myWSU. Apparently, all of your personal information (email, netID, social security number, date of birth, W2 information, etc.) is all stored online in a single location. So, if a hacker makes it to that location all they need to steal your identity is there for the taking. Does this mean your information has been compromised? Probably not. They had to have some kernel of your information to get in. WSU IT doesn’t think that there are many instances of people being compromised. But they have also been very tight-lipped about the situation. So my suggestion is that you take a good look at your bank accounts and credit rating to make sure you are ok.
Campus IT Alerts, Maintenace, and Updates
Central Payments Systems – There was a problem with the CaptureRequest functionality in the Central Payments system. This is a web service method which enables capture of authorized amounts at a later time than the authorization occurs. This is typically used for subscriptions and organizations who ship products to customers. Only 6 WSU merchant accounts are configured for this functionality. The process disruption was somehow related to a vendor maintenance process. ITS support worked with the vendor to diagnose and resolve this issue. As of 2 pm today, this functionality has returned and the system is working at full capacity. Protecting WSU from False Electronic Payment Requests – Earlier this week, the ITS Coordinator sent out information about how to help safeguard against fraudulent electronic transfer requests. Allow though this communication was directed at accounts personnel, there was good general information for everyone. I posted the communication and related attachments in a separate blog post found here: Phishing, spoofing and spam, Oh my! Although the title is light-hearted, the content is very serious and everyone should take a look.
Changes disabling Windows 2003 servers from accessing WSU eServices – TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will be disabled for the websites: webapps.wsu.edu, aiswebservice.wsu.edu, eweb.wsu.edu, and ewebservice.wsu.edu. These sites include the applications PERMS, AuthManager, EAMS, University Stores, CentralPayments, University Payments, and Advance Tuition payment. No service disruption is expected during maintenance. It is unlikely that customers of these applications will experience any problems after this change, as similar changes have already been made to the main WSU Login page which these applications utilize.
Windows 2003 servers will not be able to communicate with our web services after this change. If you are running a Windows 2003 server and integrate with any of these sites, please let me know ASAP. Integrators who utilize web services at aiswebservice.wsu.edu or ewebservice.wsu.edu will need to connect with TLS 1.2 going forward.
These changes were scheduled to take place last night (3/28), but no notice came out to indicate that it had been successfully completed.
Skype for Business updates – ITS is planning on multiple updates to SoB on 4/3 – 4/5 overnight (8 pm – midnight). Customers may be required to re-authenticate to existing web sessions. Although no impact is expected for ongoing conferences, customers may experience a delay during the transition between Skype for Business servers or possibly need to wait while their client re-establishes a session during the four-hour maintenance window. The updates are said to affect all SoB services and features. Let’s hope this makes SoB function better!
Termination of POP and IMAP Services – POP and IMAP services on WSUNIX (mail.wsu.edu) were discontinued on March 15, 2018. As f now, itis no longer be possible to use mail clients such as Outlook or Eudora to read mail delivered to mail.wsu.edu. For those accounts where mail is forwarded to other locations such as Office 365, that mail will continue to be forwarded at this time. This was the final step in migrating the WSU email.